KABUL, Afghanistan — During an unannounced New Year’s Eve visit to Afghanistan, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano traveled to the country’s mountainous border region near Pakistan to see first-hand her department’s efforts in the war effort there.

“Seeing is worth a thousand words,” Napolitano said after the tour, to which Fox News was granted exclusive access. “This all involves safety and security in this part of the world. And that is something that has direct connection as well to the United States.”

She described her department’s role in war-torn Afghanistan as a “complement” to the military operations there.

Her agency has about two dozen officials in Afghanistan, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Customs and Border Protection officers, and Border Patrol agents. Many are training Afghan security forces to manage their country’s borders.

Poor Afghanistan. They really don’t have any chance at all, do they?

The only thing worse than the blind leading the blind are the fools leading the fools.

The Obama administration’s approach to securing a border entails, first of all, doing nothing whatsoever to actually secure the border at all. Because, obviously, doing something like securing a border is racist. The second step in Obama border non-security involves carefully placing signs in border states announcing the surrender of national sovereignty, and advising citizens to keep out so the illegal immigrants can conduct their business without being disturbed by gringos who stupidly care about enforcing their country’s laws:

The third step involves vigorously attacking Arizona or any other state that actually wants to have any kind of meaningful security from the illegal immigrant invasion. And, oh, you can add additional steps, such as bogus eggheaded liberal pseudo-scientific studies to show that the invasion across America’s border is actually a good thing for the United States.

After watching President Obama’s remarks on national security this afternoon, John Lehman, the secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration and a member of the 9/11 Commission, tells National Review Online that, “frankly, I’m pissed off.”

“President Obama just doesn’t get it,” says Lehman. “I don’t think he has a clue. It’s all pure spin. He’s ignoring key issues and taking respectable professionals like John Brennan and turning them into hacks and shills. It’s beyond contempt.”

“The president has ignored the 9/11 Commission’s report,” says Lehman. “This whole idea that we can fix things by jumping higher and faster is ridiculous. The fact is that the system worked just like we said it would work if the president failed to give the Director of National Intelligence the tools he needs: it’s bloated, bureaucratic, layered, and stultified.”

“President Obama continues to totally ignore one of the important thrusts of our 9/11 recommendations, which is that you have to approach counterterrorism as a multiagency intelligence issue, and not as a law-enforcement issue. He’s made a lot of commission’s members angry for dismissing our report and ignoring key recommendations.” Obama, he adds, has taken a “lawyer-like, politically-correct approach” to national security issues like terrorist watchlists and no-fly lists. “You got to blame the president for enforcing the politically-correct and legalistic policies that led to these failures.”

I myself didn’t bother to watch the latest Obama press conference. I have long-since come to the realization that Obama may not like waterboarding very much, but he doesn’t mind torturing truth. But I did look over a couple of articles reporting on it. I didn’t see anything new, other than that Obama is saying his old garbage in a slightly different way. A good leader has to pay attention to what his spin doctors draw from focus group studies, after all.

Charles Krauthammer has done an excellent job describing how “Obama just doesn’t get it.”

The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration’s response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism “man-caused disasters.” Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York — a trifecta of political correctness and image management.

And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term “war on terror.” It’s over — that is, if it ever existed.

Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term “asymmetric warfare.”

And one of the chief ways Obama just doesn’t get it is Gitmo. Rather than re-declaring war on terror (which his administration early on abandoned), Obama has made his central front the war on Gitmo. Why? Because he believed that it was our actions, rather than the hatred of the terrorists, that was causing the war. And by allowing our enemy to dictate what we do or don’t do, Obama thought that we could pacify the enemy.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: When you hear Gibbs talk about Guantanamo as a recruiting tool, this is what we hear over and over again. I mean, it’s as if he knows no history at all. The list of grievances that Al Qaeda has is endless and replenishing.

When Usama bin Laden declared war on the United States officially in a fatwa 1996 and 1998, the two top reasons were, a, the occupation of the holy places, Mecca and Medina, and, second, the suffering of the Iraqi people under anti-Saddam sanctions.

Well, there are no soldiers, American soldiers in Saudi Arabia anymore, and there are no sanctions obviously on Iraq. But the war continues. These excuses are endless.

Bin Laden sometimes starts the speech by saying in the name of Andalusia. Andalusia is Spain and Portugal, which was Muslim until it fell to Ferdinand and Isabel in 1492. Guantanamo Bay isn’t going to undo that.

The idea that we ought to send people when we have a rate of recidivism of 20 percent over all, but probably extremely high, much higher than that, for Yemen and Saudi Arabia who will rejoin the fight as a way to eliminate excuses, which are all that these are, these are not — these are excuses and not at all grievances, is absurd.

The reason the way is on is because Al Qaeda hates our way of life, our independence, our tolerance, our respect of women, and the threat it poses to the fanatical kind of Islam that they are advocating.

In the end the issue isn’t Guantanamo. That’s a question of location. You can ultimately have it in the U.S., an abandoned air base in Alaska — who cares? It’s the question of defending the idea of detention without trial.

You do that in all wars, all countries do. You hold an enemy combatant until the war is over. And you have to argue that that is legitimate.

When Obama denies that this is a War on Terror, he takes away the legitimacy of that stand, and thus he has to end up releasing people.

Obama should be focused on trying to fill Gitmo to overflowing. But he just wants to close it down out of an uncomprehending philosophy.

Gitmo didn’t even EXIST when the Jihadists launched the massive 9/11 attack against us. The war in Iraq didn’t exist. The war in Afghanistan didn’t exist.

To use any of these things as somehow causing the terrorists to hate us is beyond self-delusion. But that has been precisely what Obama has done.

Regarding security, Obama again perpetuates the fundamental flaw of the left: focusing on protecting terrorists’ rights rather than focusing on protecting Americans’ lives. Focusing on high-tech gadgets and budgets rather than on focusing on proven solutions that have worked for decades. Focusing on your fingernail clippers and shampoo rather than focusing on the terrorists through profiling.

Obama is using Predator drones to massacre “alleged” terrorists in foreign countries without reading them their rights or filing charges against them in court. Which I’m all in favor of. Because we’re at war, and that’s what a country that is at war does. The people attacking us are committing acts of war against the United States. But then Obama irrationally and hypocritically files criminal charges against terrorists caught in the act of committing terrorism.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has gone cold on his US counterpart Barack Obama, the Financial Times (FT) reported Monday.

Sarkozy, whose pro-Washington stance has seen him nicknamed “Sarko the American,” stressed that France and the US were “the same family” during his first face-to-face meeting with Obama in April since the US elections last year.

But the French president has clashed since then with his US counterpart on a series of issues, raising the question of whether Sarkozy is reverting to the anti-US posture of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac.

“He has now shifted from a pro-Bush position to an anti-Obama position,” the FT quoted Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, international affairs spokesman for the opposition Socialists, as saying.

Obama’s irritation with his French counterpart began when Sarkozy tried to grab the limelight at the G20 summit in London in April and talked condescendingly of the US President in private.

Sarkozy told colleagues that he found Obama to be inexperienced and unbriefed, especially on climate change, according to The Times of London.

In September, the French president expressed his frustration over how to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the priority that Obama attaches to the long-term goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.

The French government also refused a US request to send more troops to Afghanistan, while several other European allies are planning to do so.

The French press often publishes Sarkozy’s unflattering comments about Obama’s lack of prior government experience, his alleged difficulty in reaching decisions or his domestic electoral setbacks.

“The paradox of the situation is that in terms of the relationship with the US, he can do a Chirac in that he can criticize the Americans but he can do it from a position that is 180 degrees different from Chirac,” the FT quoted François Heisbourg, an adviser to the Foundation for Strategic Research, a Paris-based think tank, as saying.

“He can play to a habitual anti-American standpoint but not from a position that is fundamentally anti-American,” he added.

Agencies – Global Times

“Pro-Bush position”? “Anti-Obama position”? Blasphemy!!! “Objective” journalists across the nation tear their robes at this crime against He-Who-Makes-Their-Legs-Quiver.

But it is not just Canada where the unemployed are faring better. Other countries, too, decided against a massive stimulus plan. In March, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel nodding in agreement at his side, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared: “the problem is not about spending more.” Later that month, the president of the European Union, Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek of the Czech Republic, castigated the Obama administration’s deficit spending and bank bailouts as “a road to hell.”The Washington Postwrote that there was a “fundamental divide that persists between the United States and many European countries over the best way to respond to the global financial crisis.”

The unemployment rate in the European Union was higher than in the United States to begin with even before the Obama administration’s spending. By January, the EU unemployment rate stood at 8.5 percent — almost a whole percentage point higher than ours. So what has happened since the big U.S. stimulus spending spree was passed? We more than caught up with the EU’s high unemployment rate. By August, the last month data is available for the EU, the U.S.’s unemployment rate slightly exceeded the EU’s — 9.7 versus 9.6 percent.

And of course the leaders of Europe were right, and Obama is an inexperienced, unqualified, and incompetent socialist nincompoop. And watching your fellow leader on the other side of the pond fail doesn’t inspire either confidence or camaraderie.

Another issue has been the unrelenting march of Iran toward nuclear weapons while Obama dithered, pontificated, and showed his weakness while many European leaders are after years FINALLY beginning to understand the threat of a nuclear Iran. From an article I wrote months ago:

One major sticking point has been President Obama’s softer stance on Iran, while President Sarkozy prefers a more hawkish approach. Sarkozy said last month: “I support America’s outstretched hand. But what has the international community gained from these offers of dialogue? Nothing but more enriched uranium and centrifuges.”

With such profound differences on how to rebuild their economies and take care of their people (or not), and on how to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran and protect their people (or not), you can see why the honeymoon might be over. Just because a thrill goes up Chris Matthews leg doesn’t mean that one goes up Nicholas Sarkozy’s.

Well, at least the terrorists don’t dare attack us under the beloved Obama.

Oops, wait a second. I guess we’ve had a dozen attempted terrorist attacks in 2009, including two that were completely undetected on Obama’s watch. Versus years of being safe under George Bush after he took measures (which Obama dismantled) to keep the country safe.

Not to mention two successful domestic jihadist terrorist attacks in 2009 that resulted in the deaths of Americans.

NEWARK (CBS) ― It’s a tale of shocking ineptitude: CBS 2 has learned a series of missteps unnecessarily added to the mayhem at Newark Liberty International Airport on Sunday. The six-hour delay stranded thousands of people, creating extreme crowding and chaos.

The mistakes made at the airport give new meaning to the term “domino effect.” It was a cascading series of missteps that cry out for action.

The Post and Courier has this to say about Dear Leader Obama’s handling of the war on terror – oops – make that the “overseas contingency operation” (sans the “overseas” part):

President Obama replaced the top intelligence professionals installed by President Bush on the grounds that they were tainted by what he considered the unethical practices of the last administration in fighting the war on terror. He damaged morale in the intelligence community by reopening a closed investigation of allegations of detainee mistreatment. President Obama has shunned the very concept of a war and has shown a preference for treating terrorist attacks as criminal acts.

Whether the president’s actions gave terrorists an advantage isn’t obvious, but this year for the first time in eight years there have been two undetected terrorist attacks on the United States. The first came on Nov. 5 at Fort Hood, Texas, when Army Maj. Malik Hassan killed 13 and wounded 30 in an attack apparently inspired by radical Muslim views. Hassan was known by U.S. intelligence to be in frequent contact with Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, the same man said to have counseled the unsuccessful Christmas Day bomber.

How’s that “the world loves us now because Obama is president” thing working for you?

I remember the words of Janet Napolitano as she changed “terrorist attack” to “man-caused disaster”:

“In my speech, although I did not use the word “terrorism,” I referred to “man-caused” disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear…”

There’s still time to use replace “man-caused disasters” with the phrase, “bury-our-heads-in-the-sand-and-hope-it-all-goes-away.”

Maybe “the politics of fear” had the virtue of bearing at least some resemblance to reality.

Let’s make sure everyone’s up to speed. On Christmas day a terrorist with a bomb just like the one a terrorist tried to use 8 years ago nearly creates an explosion that would have murdered 290 passengers, plus whoever happened to be in the jumbo jet’s path as it crashed into the airport. The only thing that saved us from mass death and unmitigated disaster was pure dumb luck and the heroism of a passenger – who dragged the terrorist down and separated him from the device he was still attempting to detonate.

Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security trotted out to say “the system worked” – earning immediate derision even from the liberal lamestream media.

She says that she was misinterpreted the first time, and what she meant was that the system worked after the attack, as opposed to before the attack when it utterly failed. Aside from the fact that it really matters that the system work BEFORE the terrorist gets on the plane with the bomb in his underpants, 20,000 pilots angrily pointed out that no, it utterly failed afterward, too:

DALLAS — The pilots union at American Airlines says federal officials failed to notify crews on planes in the United States about the attempted terror attack aboard a Northwest jet on Christmas Day.

Well, the B-team failed. Obama finally decided it was time to bring out the “good, solid B+” team and appear before the cameras himself. Obama came out a full three days after the terrorist attack, presumably armed with accurate information.

After telling Americans that the terrorist was going to be treated like a US citizen rather than like a foreign terrorist and enemy of the state (while simultaneously claiming he would do everything possible to keep us safe), Obama said that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was merely an “isolated extremist.” Hardly anything to trifle over. Go home, folks, nothing to see here.

Little Green Footballs immediately called Obama’s idiotic statement the “Outrageous Outrage of the Day.” And every thinking human being on the planet knew that Obama was chock full of the stuff they use to fertilize farmland.

The New York Daily News voters were apparently more prescient in Obama’s grade: 57% gave him an ‘F’, another 19% gave him a ‘D’, and only 13% combined gave him an ‘A’ or the ‘B+’ he gave himself.

So now we’ve finally got Mr B+ by his estimation (and Mr F by most Americans’ view) finally coming out yet again and saying what every non-brain-dead person knew was correct right away when Obama was saying the exact the opposite: that the terrorist was part of a major terrorist organization, very likely al Qaeda:

“We know that he traveled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies. It appears that he joined an affiliate of al Qaeda, and that this group — al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America,” the president said.

Only we already knew all that the day Obama called Abdulmutallab an “isolated extremist,” too. The media had already published links between Abdulmutallab, al Qaeda, and Yemen before Obama even addressed the nation only to deny the obvious.

58% of Americans (that’s 1% more than think Obama deserves an ‘F’ as in “failure” for a grade) think that we should be waterboarding Abdulmutallab until he either tells us what we need to know, or grows gills.

Unfortunately, we voted for a president who would rather protect terrorist’s rights than protect Americans’ lives.

It’s almost as if Obama realizes that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would have been a better terrorist if he’d only had even more help arrive from Gitmo – and wants punks like Abdulmutallab to “be all they can be.”

Obama finally announced today that he was suspending Gitmo transfers to Yemen for at least a little while, whereas only yesterday administration officials were swearing up and down that the transfers would continue. But Obama is allowing “diversity visas” to proceed full speed ahead. Why? Because we don’t have enough radical jihadists coming to us from Yemen. The words “terrorist state” really don’t seem to matter to these people.

It’s no longer a “war on terror,” and we are no longer dealing with “terrorism” or “terrorists.” Oh, no. Obama will give a 6,000 word speech in Egypt on American-Islamic issues and NEVER use any of those hateful terms.

Nope. We’re now a nation that is managing an “overseas contingency operation,” rather than fighting a war on terror. We’re trying to reduce “man-caused disasters” rather than terrorism (at least while my lawsuit against DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano for sexually discriminating by calling it “man-caused” rather than “human-caused” is still pending). And, whatever you want to call the people who are launching murderous attacks against innocent and unarmed civilians, don’t you DARE call them “terrorists.”

Well, whatever we choose to call them (I like “meanies,” because it avoids all those hateful politically incorrect words, but still says they’re mean), Obama has stopped waterboarding them and started mirandizing them.

I feel so cozy and safe under Barack Obama. If we ever suffer a massive overseas contingency man-caused disaster, we can know that he will give a really cautiously-worded speech in retaliation. And who would want something like THAT directed against them?

When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer,” he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet.

Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. “I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal – read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up,” Tenet wrote in his memoirs.

If Tenet is right, it’s a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.”

That effort, which elevates the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and diminishes the role of intelligence and military officials, was described in a May 28 Los Angeles Timesarticle.

The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions.

Under the “global justice” initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said.

Thanks in part to the popularity of law and order television shows and movies, many Americans are familiar with the Miranda warning – so named because of the landmark 1966 Supreme Court case Miranda vs. Arizona that required police officers and other law enforcement officials to advise suspected criminals of their rights.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.

A lawyer who has worked on detainee issues for the U.S. government offers this rationale for the Obama administration’s approach. “If the US is mirandizing certain suspects in Afghanistan, they’re likely doing it to ensure that the treatment of the suspect and the collection of information is done in a manner that will ensure the suspect can be prosecuted in a US court at some point in the future.”

But Republicans on Capitol Hill are not happy. “When they mirandize a suspect, the first thing they do is warn them that they have the ‘right to remain silent,’” says Representative Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “It would seem the last thing we want is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other al-Qaeda terrorist to remain silent. Our focus should be on preventing the next attack, not giving radical jihadists a new tactic to resist interrogation–lawyering up.”

According to Mike Rogers, that is precisely what some human rights organizations are advising detainees to do. “The International Red Cross, when they go into these detention facilities, has now started telling people – ‘Take the option. You want a lawyer.’”

Rogers adds: “The problem is you take that guy at three in the morning off of a compound right outside of Kabul where he’s building bomb materials to kill US soldiers, and read him his rights by four, and the Red Cross is saying take the lawyer – you have now created quite a confusion amongst the FBI, the CIA and the United States military. And confusion is the last thing you want in a combat zone.”

One thing is clear, though. A detainee who is not talking cannot provide information about future attacks. Had Khalid Sheikh Mohammad had a lawyer, Tenet wrote, “I am confident that we would have obtained none of the information he had in his head about imminent threats against the American people.”

I liked hearing “You have the right to remain silent” from Sgt. Joe Friday on Dragnet; I HATE hearing it from Obama to a terrorist who knows the murderous plans of his terrorist buddies (Sorry: I meant to say “meanie”).

Stephen Hayes cites George Tenet because he was a CIA Director who had been appointed by Democrat Bill Clinton. A corroborating source is fellow career intelligence professional and former CIA Director General Michael Hayden, who said, “fully half of the government’s knowledge about the structure and activities of al Qaeda came from those interrogations [of terrorists Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Ramzi bin al Shibh].”

What do you truly think we would have learned from these hard-core terrorist murderers if we’d given them lawyers instead of an invitation to experience some pain? I mean, seriously, if you think that being nice to these guys in the presence of their lawyers would have yielded intelligence information, then I can paint string yellow and sell it to you as 24k gold chains.

This is amazing folly on an unimaginable scale.

“The problem is you take that guy at three in the morning off of a compound right outside of Kabul where he’s building bomb materials to kill US soldiers, and read him his rights by four, and the Red Cross is saying take the lawyer – you have now created quite a confusion amongst the FBI, the CIA and the United States military. And confusion is the last thing you want in a combat zone.”

President Barack Obama has said keeping Ghailani from coming to the United States “would prevent his trial and conviction.” Taking a drastically different stance, House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio labeled Tuesday’s move “the first step in the Democrats’ plan to import terrorists into America.”

But no. We’re going to let them in under Obama. We’re going to let them make a mockery of our court system. We’re going to let them in to radicalize more and more of our inmates into the ways of terrorist jihad.

Obama’s new foreign policy is a disgrace. Giving foreign terrorists captured on the battlefield miranda protections and providing them with lawyers is an insult to our warriors who hunt these killers down.

Today, an 89-year old documented nut entered the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. I have no idea what the politics of Stephen Tyrone Jones were, but the man serving as a guard died a hero: he died standing in the way of this evil man and the innocent and unarmed people he would have murdered.

A question immediately comes to mind: what side of the bowl did this nut inhabit? Obviously he was a nut. But was he a rightwing nut or a leftwing nut?

What the left want us to believe is that James von Brunn is a rightwing extremist. Why? Because he was an anti-Semite, and therefore a racist. And racists, as everybody just knows, are rightwing.

In the report, right-wing extremism was defined as hate-motivated groups and movements, such as hatred of certain religions, racial or ethnic groups. “It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration,” the report said. […]

The department’s definition of left-wing extremism in the March 26 report includes a reference to violence, stating these groups that embrace anticapitalist, communist or socialist beliefs seek “to bring about change through violent revolution rather than through established political processes.”

So, based on that, where do you pidgeon-hole an Anti-Semitic racist like von Brunn? Read both definitions and it’s a no-brainer. “Hatred of certain religions, racial, or ethnic groups.” Check, check, and check. James von Brunn is a rightwing extremist. Just ask Janet Napolitano.

Only that’s completely asinine.

An article by Michelle Malkin shows just how profoundly dishonest and biased the “assessment” by the Obama DHS truly is.

Sixty-two percent (62%) of Republicans back Israel’s decision to take military action against the Palestinians, but only half as many Democrats (31%) agree. A majority of Democrats (55%) say Israel should have tried to find a diplomatic solution first, a view shared by just 27% of Republicans.

While 75% of Republicans say Israel is an ally of the United States, just 55% of Democrats agree. Seven percent (7%) of Democrats say Israel is an enemy of America, but only one percent (1%) of Republicans say the same. For 21% of Republicans, Israel is somewhere in between, and 28% of Democrats agree.

And this difference in views toward Israel and Jews is fairly established and consistent, as a Gallup survey from April 2002 shows:

The [04/17/2002 Gallup] survey of 1,009 adults conducted on April 5-7 found that 67 percent of Republicans side with Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, compared to 45% of Democrats. Support for the Palestinians is at 8% among Republicans, versus 21% among Democrats.

How can Republicans/conservatives be overwhelmingly more supportive of Israel than Democrats/liberals, and yet at the same time overwhelmingly more Anti-Semitic than Democrats/liberals? How does that even begin to make sense? As a conservative evangelical Christian, I support Israel precisely because it is a Jewish state. I pray for the shalom of Jerusalem according to Psalm 122:6. I believe in something called “evil” and realize that the history of Israel and of Jews reveals that they have been victims of it FAR MORE than perpetrators of it. I constantly refer to the “Judeo-Christian worldview” that respects and cherishes the influence of Judaism on my Christian faith.

Frontpage Magazine has an article that reveals why those on the left – who deny most of why I support Israel – end up embracing racist and Anti-Semitic views.

The profoundly Anti-Semitic Nation of Islam has long and strong ties to the Democratic Party, and to Barack Obama personally via his 23 year relationship with Jeremiah Wright and Trinity United Church and via his participation with the Million Man March. THIS VERY DAY, Jeremiah Wright said he’s denied access to Obama. Why? Quote: “Rev. Jeremiah Wright says Jews are keeping him from talking to President Obama.”

How DARE anyone on the left accuse the right of being Anti-Semitic. HOW DARE THEY!!!

And if Democrats want to label Republicans as “racist,” perhaps they should either abolish the “Congressional Black Caucas” or find where Republicans are hiding their equivalent “Congressional White Caucus.” And you might either denounce Congressional Black Caucus member Bobby Rush or find similar racist statements coming from Republicans. Show us where Republican leaders openly demanded that a Caucasian receive a US Senate seat.

An article on Examiner.com shows that von Brunn was more more leftwing than rightwing. Among other things, he despised George Bush, believed 9/11 was a Bush conspiracy, and railed against “neo-cons.”

The anti-semitism of von Brunn is the first thing one notices when visiting these bizarre websites. However, like those of most “white supremacists”, many of von Brunn’s political views track “Left” rather than “Right.” Clearly, a re-evaluation of these obsolete definitions is long overdue.

For example, he unleashed his hatred of both Presidents Bush and other “neo-conservatives” in online essays. As even some “progressives” such as the influential Adbusters magazine publicly admit, “neoconservative” is often used as a derogatory code word for “Jews”. As well, even a cursory glance at “white supremacist” writings reveals a hatred of, say, big corporations that is virtually indistinguishable from that of anti-globalization activists.

James von Brunn’s advocacy of 9/11 conspiracy theories also gives him an additional commonality with individuals on the far-left.

In fact, antisemitism is something the New Left and the “Far Right” have had in common since the 1980s, which is why so many former leftists like David Horowitz defected from one side to the other during the Reagan era and beyond. It also helps explain the otherwise baffling alliance between the Left and radical Islam.

That this shooting occurred shortly after President Obama’s former mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, blamed “the Jews” for his lack of access to his former parishioner is a troubling confluence of events as well.

I’m not going to answer the question posed by my title: “What Makes Someone ‘Rightwing’? But I’ll say ONE thing for certain.

It’s most definitely NOT “racism” or “Antisemitism.” There’s just way too much of that crap going on on the part of the leftwing to possibly attribute it exclusively to the right.